H. Wells - Ann Veronica

compose and address to Capes. They came teeming distressfully

through her aching brain:

"A man can kick, his skirts don't tear;

A man scores always, everywhere.

"His dress for no man lays a snare;

A man scores always, everywhere.

For hats that fail and hats that flare;

Toppers their universal wear;

A man scores always, everywhere.

"Men's waists are neither here nor there;

A man scores always, everywhere.

"A man can manage without hair;

A man scores always, everywhere.

"There are no males at men to stare;

A man scores always, everywhere.

"And children must we women bear--

"Oh, damn!" she cried, as the hundred-and-first couplet or so

presented itself in her unwilling brain.

For a time she worried about that compulsory bath and cutaneous

diseases.

Then she fell into a fever of remorse for the habit of bad

language she had acquired.

"A man can smoke, a man can swear;

A man scores always, everywhere."

She rolled over on her face, and stuffed her fingers in her ears

to shut out the rhythm from her mind. She lay still for a long

time, and her mind resumed at a more tolerable pace. She found

herself talking to Capes in an undertone of rational admission.

"There is something to be said for the lady-like theory after

all," she admitted. "Women ought to be gentle and submissive

persons, strong only in virtue and in resistance to evil

compulsion. My dear--I can call you that here, anyhow--I know

that. The Victorians over-did it a little, I admit. Their idea

of maidenly innocence was just a blank white--the sort of flat

white that doesn't shine. But that doesn't alter the fact that

there IS innocence. And I've read, and thought, and guessed, and

looked--until MY innocence--it's smirched.

"Smirched! . . .

"You see, dear, one IS passionately anxious for something--what

is it? One wants to be CLEAN. You want me to be clean. You

would want me to be clean, if you gave me a thought, that is. . .

.

"I wonder if you give me a thought. . . .

"I'm not a good woman. I don't mean I'm not a good woman--I mean

that I'm not a GOOD woman. My poor brain is so mixed, dear, I

hardly know what I am saying. I mean I'm not a good specimen of

a woman. I've got a streak of male. Things happen to women--

proper women--and all they have to do is to take them well.

They've just got to keep white. But I'm always trying to make

things happen. And I get myself dirty . . .

"It's all dirt that washes off, dear, but it's dirt.

"The white unaggressive woman who corrects and nurses and serves,

and is worshipped and betrayed--the martyr-queen of men, the

white mother. . . . You can't do that sort of thing unless you

do it over religion, and there's no religion in me--of that

sort--worth a rap.

"I'm not gentle. Certainly not a gentlewoman.

"I'm not coarse--no! But I've got no purity of mind--no real

purity of mind. A good woman's mind has angels with flaming

swords at the portals to keep out fallen thoughts. . . .

"I wonder if there are any good women really.

"I wish I didn't swear. I do swear. It began as a joke. . . .

It developed into a sort of secret and private bad manners. It's

got to be at last like tobacco-ash over all my sayings and

doings. . . .

" 'Go it, missie,' they said; "kick aht!'

"I swore at that policeman--and disgusted him. Disgusted him!

"For men policemen never blush;

A man in all things scores so much . . .

"Damn! Things are getting plainer. It must be the dawn creeping

in.

"Now here hath been dawning another blue day;

I'm just a poor woman, please take it away.

"Oh, sleep! Sleep! Sleep! Sleep!"

Part 2

"Now," said Ann Veronica, after the half-hour of exercise, and

sitting on the uncomfortable wooden seat without a back that was

her perch by day, "it's no good staying here in a sort of maze.

I've got nothing to do for a month but think. I may as well

think. I ought to be able to think things out.

"How shall I put the question? What am I? What have I got to do

with myself? . . .

"I wonder if many people HAVE thought things out?

"Are we all just seizing hold of phrases and obeying moods?

"It wasn't so with old-fashioned people, they knew right from

wrong; they had a clear-cut, religious faith that seemed to

explain everything and give a rule for everything. We haven't.

I haven't, anyhow. And it's no good pretending there is one when

there isn't. . . . I suppose I believe in God. . . . Never

really thought about Him--people don't. . . . I suppose my creed

is, 'I believe rather indistinctly in God the Father Almighty,

substratum of the evolutionary process, and, in a vein of vague

sentimentality that doesn't give a datum for anything at all, in

Jesus Christ, His Son.' . . .

"It's no sort of good, Ann Veronica, pretending one does believe

when one doesn't. . . .

"And as for praying for faith--this sort of monologue is about as

near as any one of my sort ever gets to prayer. Aren't I

asking--asking plainly now? . . .

"We've all been mixing our ideas, and we've got intellectual hot

coppers--every blessed one of us. . . .

"A confusion of motives--that's what I am! . . .

"There is this absurd craving for Mr. Capes--the 'Capes crave,'

they would call it in America. Why do I want him so badly? Why

do I want him, and think about him, and fail to get away from

him?

"It isn't all of me.

"The first person you love, Ann Veronica, is yourself--get hold

of that! The soul you have to save is Ann Veronica's soul. . .

."

She knelt upon the floor of her cell and clasped her hands, and

remained for a long time in silence.

"Oh, God!" she said at last, "how I wish I had been taught to

pray!"

Part 3

She had some idea of putting these subtle and difficult issues to

the chaplain when she was warned of his advent. But she had not

reckoned with the etiquette of Canongate. She got up, as she had

been told to do, at his appearance, and he amazed her by sitting

down, according to custom, on her stool. He still wore his hat,

to show that the days of miracles and Christ being civil to

sinners are over forever. She perceived that his countenance was

only composed by a great effort, his features severely

compressed. He was ruffled, and his ears were red, no doubt from

some adjacent controversy. He classified her as he seated

himself.

"Another young woman, I suppose," he said, "who knows better than

her Maker about her place in the world. Have you anything to ask

me?"

Ann Veronica readjusted her mind hastily. Her back stiffened.

She produced from the depths of her pride the ugly investigatory

note of the modern district visitor. "Are you a special sort of

clergyman," she said, after a pause, and looking down her nose at

him, "or do you go to the Universities?"

"Oh!" he said, profoundly.

He panted for a moment with unuttered replies, and then, with a

scornful gesture, got up and left the cell.

So that Ann Veronica was not able to get the expert advice she

certainly needed upon her spiritual state.

Part 4

After a day or so she thought more steadily. She found herself

in a phase of violent reaction against the suffrage movement, a

phase greatly promoted by one of those unreasonable objections

people of Ann Veronica's temperament take at times--to the girl

in the next cell to her own. She was a large, resilient girl,